James Chase - The Guilty Are Afraid

“Haven’t you anything better than this junk?” I asked.

“I’m looking for a wedding present.”

“Isn’t there anything you like here?” she asked, and tried to look surprised.

“Take a look yourself,” I said. “Is there anything here you’d want as a wedding present?”

She cast her eye around the room, then she pulled a little face.

“You could be right. Will you wait a moment?”

She left the counter and went over to the hard-faced blonde and spoke to her. The blonde looked me over. She didn’t appear to be impressed. I had no diamond rings, nor a Pekinese. I was just another jerk on vacation.

The girl I had spoken to came over to me.

“Miss Maddox will look after you,” she said, and indicated the hard-faced blonde.

As I moved over to her, she stood up. She had one of those hippy, bosomy figures you see in the nylon ads, but rarely in real life.

“Was there something?” she asked in a bored voice, her eyes running over me and not thinking much of what they saw.

“I’m looking for a wedding present,” I said. “You don’t call this muck a treasure house of original design, do you?”

She lifted her plucked eyebrows.

“We have other designs, but they come a little pricey.”

“They do? Well, you only get married once in a while. Let me see them.”

She drew aside the curtain.

“Please go in.”

I moved past her, through the doorway into a slightly smaller room. There were only about sixty specimens of Mr. Hahn’s art on show there; each had its own stand and was shown off to its best advantage. A quick look told me that this must be the stuff Margot had raved about. It was unlike the junk in the other room as crystal is unlike a diamond.

Miss Maddox flicked long fingers at the exhibits.

“Perhaps something like these?”

“Better,” I said, looking around. There was another curtain covering another doorway at the far end of the room with a redhead guarding it. “Can I wander around?”

Miss Maddox took a few steps away from me and rested her elegant hips against one of the counters. Her bored eyes told me I wasn’t kidding her for one moment. The exhibits in this room were certainly good. A bronze statue of a naked girl about ten inches high, with her hands covering her breasts, held me entranced. I could feel life flowing out of her. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had suddenly jumped off the pedestal on which she stood and had run out of the room.

“That’s nice,” I said to Miss Maddox. “What’s it worth?”

“Two thousand dollars,” she told me in that indifferent voice a car salesman will tell you the price of a Rolls.

“As much as that? It’s a little high for me.”

A small sneer came and went, and she moved a few more paces away from me.

The curtain of the doorway through which I had come moved aside and a fat, white-faced man came sliding in. He was wearing white flannel trousers, a natty blazer with an elaborate crest on its pocket and a six-inch cigar between his fat, white fingers.

I immediately recognized him.

It was the man Cordez had called Donaghue: the man who had handed over a thousand dollars for two match-folders the previous night when I had been looking through Cordez’s window.

Chapter 10

I

I moved across the room and came to rest before the model of a matador with his cape extended and his sword in his hand. I moved slowly around it while I watched Donaghue out of the corner of my eye as he came to an abrupt stop at the sight of me.

He was as nervous as a flustered hen. He took two quick steps back towards the doorway through which he had come, changed his mind and came forward with a little rush, paused again to look at me, then took three steps sideways. I could see he couldn’t make up his mind whether to run or stay.

I said to Miss Maddox, “Would this item be a little less expensive?”

“That is three thousand, five hundred dollars,” she said, not even bothering to look at me.

Donaghue started off across the room towards the redhead, who watched him come, her face expressionless. I moved on to a group of children that was even better than the matador.

Donaghue paused beside the redhead, fumbled in his pocket, took something from it and showed it to her. I saw something small and red in his hand. I didn’t have to be a detective to guess it was a Musketeer Club match-folder.

The redhead pulled aside the curtain and Donaghue disappeared through the doorway. I caught a glimpse of a passage before the curtain fell into place.

I began to move around the room, looking for something that was small and modest, but there wasn’t anything. I felt the blonde and the redhead were watching me. I finally came to rest before a model of a poodle, again executed with the same brilliance of the other models. This put me near the curtained door where the redhead was sitting. I took my time while I examined the poodle.

After five minutes or so, Miss Maddox said, with an edge to her voice, “That is seventeen hundred dollars.”

“As cheap as that?” I said, smiling at her. “It’s almost alive, isn’t it? I must think about it. Seventeen hundred dollars: almost giving it away, isn’t it?”

She pursed her lips and stared at me, her eyes now plainly hostile.

The curtain pulled aside and Donaghue slipped out. He gave me a startled stare, his eyes bulging, then he scuttled across the floor and out through the other doorway.

I decided I couldn’t continue to hang around like a heist man casing a joint. I told myself I’d better see what the match-folder I had found in Margot’s bag would buy me. I hoped it wouldn’t buy me trouble.

I looked over at the redhead and caught her staring at me. I gave her a toothy smile and advanced on her. She watched me come suspiciously. I dipped my fingers into my trousers pocket and let her see the match-folder. Her mouth tightened, and she looked over at Miss Maddox with an exasperated expression on her face as she leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside.

“Thanks,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure no one was watching me.”

Her blank, frozen stare told me I had said the wrong thing, but as she still held the curtain aside I didn’t try to make matters worse or better. I stepped through the doorway and entered a long passage, lit by strip lighting and decorated in wine red and blue.

I moved cautiously down the passage. The something inside me that works overtime when I am heading for trouble began to nudge me, starting an alarm bell going in my mind. I wished now I had brought a gun with me.

At the end of the passage, facing me, was a door. It had a cutaway panel in it which was closed, a shelf and a bell push. On the shelf was one of Marcus Hahn’s lesser works: a large pink and green earthenware bowl.

Moving soundlessly on my crepe soles I reached the door and peered into the bowl. Lying in the bottom of it were about a dozen red paper matches. They were the companions of the matches I had in my folder. Each one of them had a row of ciphers printed on them; each one had been torn from a match-folder and all the heads had been burned. The matches had been struck alight, and then immediately extinguished.

I felt this was probably an important discovery if I knew what it meant. I looked over my shoulder. At the far end of the passage the curtain hung in place: neither the redhead nor Miss Maddox were peeping at me.

I decided not to press my luck further. I was tempted to ring the bell on the door to see what happened, but as I wasn’t equipped for trouble at this moment, I decided against it. At least I had found out that there was a definite hookup between the Musketeer Club and Marcus Hahn’s so-called Treasure House. People paid out big money for a folder of matches to Cordez, then came here and parted with a match at a time: for what?